Chinese Vocabulary Teaching In A Theme-Based Instruction Model

The Theme-Based Instruction Model is one of the teaching models of Content-Based Instruction which,in turn,is among the ’smaller’ approaches of Communicative Language Teaching.Numerous of primary and secondary schools,as well as universities worldwide have implemented this theme-based model on a certain scope,and its advantages are,within the linguistics field,also widely recognised.This theme-based model encourages a student-centred approach.By revolving its lessons and materials around central themes,this model tries to balance its emphasis on both providing appropriate context as well as language learning,hence giving way to various teaching methods and techniques.Nowadays,as the theme-based instruction model has found its way into educational systems in China,it has been used in different extends in various fields-including ESL and Chinese language,but also history,geography etcetera.However,in Chinese language education for non-native speakers(hereafter called Chinese language education),this model is comparatively not as commonly used yet,as it seems the norm to follow mainstream textbooks which are more often based on topics rather than central themes-elementary textbooks for example,are usually based on Chinese language knowledge,and are not designed according to these central themes.As a consequence,it might miss out on the fundamental clearness themes provide.Chinese language education has been increasingly putting emphasis on communication,and,in linguistics,traditional grammar teaching is tending to be more and more lexicalised.Utilising a theme-based instruction model would be of great value in Chinese language education as well as in vocabulary teaching.Through research on the theme-based instruction model and supportive rationale,analysis of textbooks and questionnaire results,this thesis hopes to explore possible problems or shortcomings in Chinese vocabulary teaching and how a theme-based instruction model could offer enormous benefits in teaching vocabulary by focusing on providing both excellent thematic context as well as the necessary language instruction.